No Place Like Home

The last roses of the season.

A winter view - fruit trees bursting, bare branches on the plum tree, clear winter sky.

My first winter harvest - grapefruit, lemons, tahitian limes, tangerines.

This weekend was spent entirely pottering around the garden. We didn't leave the property once with the exception of my husband dashing out for takeaway dinner and milk on Saturday night!

After a month of long distance plane flights, big cities, fabulous hotels, meeting people, huge drives and many miles covered, there is no relief better than a weekend spent digging in the dirt. Simple pleasures of picking fruit and flowers, flying kites and just hanging out are a welcome change.

I remember as a child my father used to come home from overseas business trips and the thing he loved to do most was gather wood from our bush backyard and cook a barbeque lunch.

Being the start of winter, it is a great time to reassess the garden - what has worked and what hasn't, to pull out weeds and cut back dead growth. Its also the best time of year to make new plans for the garden. We did plenty of that, with lots of chatting over cups of tea.

My famously feral vegetable garden was, not surprisingly, completely unruly after a month left to its own devices. The local rabbits had also moved in and feasted on lettuce leaves and the weeds had a field day. Most of one day was spent pulling out the last of the killer tomatoes, hundreds of tiny weeds and nasty prickly paddock weeds that had jumped the fence.

The most satisfying thing of all is gathering up the produce and cooking up something straight from the garden. Last night I cooked one of the last of the crop of butternut pumpkins and made roast pumpkin and rosemary soup. Yum.

I will share some of the travel inspiration next time...